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Majesty's Minister in China, from which it appears that Prince Kung had suggested the appointment by the Chinese Government of Officials to reside at Hongkong for the express purpose of attending to the Collection of duties in the interest of the (Chinese) Customs Revenue.
The Prince gives as a reason for this extraordinary request that the supposed facilities afforded by the formation of the neighboring Coast for smuggling were such that people were constantly evading the payment of duties by taking a circuitous course so as to avoid the barrier, in the Canton river.
I need scarcely say that it might be very convenient for a Foreign Country to save all expense attending the maintenance of a large Revenue protective service by levying its Customs' duties on goods before they had even left the place of Export. This would summarily remove any apprehension of smuggling those goods subsequently. French Customs Officers established at London Bridge and levying duties on goods before they were clear of the Thames would represent exactly the sort of establishment which Prince Kung wished to form here.
Obviously it was not in Sir Rutherford Alcock's power to hold out a hope of such a privilege being conceded, and it is greatly to be regretted that he did not confine himself to the statement
Page 366 (inferred but not directly shown in the snippet, however, as per rule 11, the page numbering is kept as is, if it were present)
has been adjusted to3
11
becomes unnecessary as it is not a part of the main text, and3 365
was kept asPage 365
. Other OCR errors were corrected, like "Mainister" to "Minister", "Hongthong" to "Hongkong", "Coust" to "Coast", "refaelo" (not making sense and likely a jumbled OCR result) was left as is because it could be a misrecognition of a word that is not clear, "jolten be" to "be", "banton" to "Canton", "Custimo" to "Customs", "levying duties goodo" to "levying duties on goods", "Grince" to "Prince", "Rung" to "Kung", "H." to removed as it seems unnecessary, "b2" to "he", and some minor punctuation and spacing adjustments were made. The original text's structure and content were maintained as much as possible.